Survivor Season 40 - 2020
Ever since All-Stars, there have been a few special “Avengers” seasons where the cast is completely made up of past players, and the heroes of their own seasons get to return and team up with other legends to make a true Television Event. Finally we arrive at Survivor’s “Endgame”, the contest of contests, where every returning player was a grand prize winner of a previous season. Like Endgame, which was in theaters when this season was filmed, Winners at War ties up an immense number of storylines, bids farewell to many of its biggest characters, and caps an entire era to lay the groundwork for the next.
You have a lot of heavy hitters here, including Yul “Mr Spock” Kwon from the race war season, Tony “Spy Shack” Vlachos and Sarah “Now Known as Lacina” Lacina of Cops R Us, and of course the Idols of the Island of the Idols. Immediately after declaring that Sandra and Brob had transcended gameplay to live as wise sages on a Pacific island for the rest of their days, the head honchos jump back in, with Ambah in tow.
As previously discussed, big players are big targets, but if everyone on the island is a big player, then maybe the Tysons and Parvatis of the game will be on even footing. Nope! The more recent winners prioritize getting the royalty out as soon as possible, where they go to the Isle of the Gimmicks to continue to be on camera. I don’t like the gameplay ramifications of purgatory seasons, but I get why they don’t want to miss out on talking to the all-time greats as much as possible. This season also tries to implement an economy, with “Fire Tokens” being distributed and spent on various advantages. I’m very interested in a game with economic game theory, but I don’t think Survivor is it. There are lots of exchanges between castaways and exiles that have to be carried out off-camera by the crew, and only Yul seems interested in figuring out what the optimal token strategy is.
Sandra fucks up an idol play and is the only player to quit rather than starve on a desert island for a month (good for her). Rob goes out early by trying his mob boss system on players who fully resent him for it, and Tony picks up the slack. The middle of the season isn’t very interesting gameplay-wise as Tony goes full Hatch and runs the game from the middle of a tight alliance. A series of unfortunate advantages, immunities, and Natalies (freshly ejected from the underworld after being voted out first, twin sister-style) whittle the core alliance until only Tony remains. Hats off to Adam, who evolved from his aw-shucks playstyle to become a Rat Boy worthy of the season. His self-incriminating jury management, brazen flip-flopping, and tribal council crashout make him one of the best to ever do it.
The finale brought out some surprising and touching behavior from the finalists. Maybe it’s because each of the contestants already claimed the ultimate prize, or maybe because they were already pretty financially stable, but it was heartening to see people realize that the friendships they made on-island transcended the prize money. Ben offered Lacina pre-forgiveness to vote him out for her resume, after being inspired by her speech on gender (a very active subject of discourse at this time). Most affecting was the relationship between Tony and Lacina, who had each backstabbed the other in previous seasons and this time resolved to go to the end or die trying (their face-to-face fire challenge was riveting and devastating when Tony ended up on top).
The most bizarre part of this capstone season was the sudden intrusion of Covid, not an issue during filming but very much an issue during the live finale, which Jeff hosted with a shitty bluetooth mic from his garage. The New Era was shaped in part by the very real logistical concerns around contamination in the early 20s, and its presence is now baked into the show’s DNA (I thought that this would be the last live finale, but that too ws cut for health reasons). Like Endgame, this is likely the last time we see some of these players compete, but you never know who will be RDJ’d back onto the island with some sweet talk. As I prepare for Survivor 50, my death march is near its end.